Archive

With the Easter Holiday, Spring Break and general all-around nice weather upon us, I know you are busy, so this is a to-the-point DMAW update that is full of educational programs! (I’m also trying out a new Update format – your feedback is welcomed!)

There are two items that I do need your help with if you have available time:

If you have 5 years experience in direct marketing (with a specialty in any of the channels) then I need you! Volunteer judges are needed to judge the 2012 MAXI Award entries on April 17th, 9:30AM – 5PM at Production Solutions, 1953 Gallows Road, Suite 600, Vienna, VA 22182.Just complete this form – DMAW MAXI Judge – and let me know your availability.

Guest Bloggers for the DMAW blog – truly, it’s not hard! Only 400-450 words, about your thoughts on a particular blogging issue. Just send me an email and let me know that you would like submit a blog! (You will want to read the current blog by Allison King about “Getting Your ‘Mobile Mojo’ On!”) Click here for more details!

In the meantime, below is our great educational line-up for the next couple of months! The early bird deadline is coming up on a couple of them – so don’t miss out on these opportunities to save & learn!

Hope to see you soon at one of our events or even as a MAXI judge!

Best,

Donna Tschiffely

Executive Director

DMAW Monthly Lunch & Learn

Thursday, April 19, 2012

12 Noon – 2:00 PM

SEIU Conference Center

The ROI of Blogging

Bethany Bauman
Senior Director,
Digital Strategy, Merkle

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Cross Channel Marketing Symposium

Wednesday, May 9

8:00 AM – 4:00 PM

Gannett/USA Today Conference Center

Early Bird Registration ends Friday, April 6Save $55 off the regular registration fee

Group rates available for 3 or more from the same firm/organization

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List Bazaar Summit

Wednesday, May 16

8:30 AM – 4:00 PM

The Conference Center At Heart House | American College of Cardiology

Washington, DC

Early Bird Registration ends Friday, April 6Save 15% off the regular registration fee

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Social Summit – Sharpening A Tool!

Capital Conference Center

Arlington VA

Early Bird Registration ends Wednesday, May 23

Liz Strauss, Keynote

Wednesday, June 27
5:30PM-8:30 PM

Educational Presentations

Thursday, June 28
8:00AM – 4:30PM

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DMAW MAXI Competition

Needs Judges!

Tuesday, April 17

9:30AM – 5:00PM

Production Solutions

1953 Gallows Road

Suite 600

Vienna, VA 22182

Lunch will be provided.

Aside from the privilege of being a judge…this is a great opportunity to sneak-a-peak at the campaigns of other marketing professionals and see the results that they are getting!

Is your organization suffering from a lack of mobile direction? Are you trying to figure out the value of Mobile?

Learn how association and nonprofits are using mobile technology to engage their members and attract new ones. Find out how to decide which mobile technologies will provide you the best return on engagement, and how to help your organization start planning their mobile strategy.

Attendees will leave the luncheon witha clear understanding of the mobile technologies that associations and nonprofits are using, how to determine which mobile technology is right for the job and the top 5 steps to take in setting your organization’s mobile strategy on the right track.

Kelly Flowers, principal and mobile strategy consultant at GrowthVine, has been working with associations and not-for-profits for over 10 years, helping them to create engagement with their membership, provide key benefits to their members, and use technology to attract new audiences. Kelly has been studying the exploding landscape of mobile solutions and is excited about working with associations to create new and innovative ways to engage members with mobile.

Is your organization successfully using cross‐channel marketing to reach and retain customers, donors, or members? We are talking about more than just using multiple channels.

Real Cross-Channel marketing is a very powerful tool and takes innovation and strategy! A true cross-channel plan focuses on the customer as they are followed and tracked while they switch from one channel to another. The brand needs to listen to the customer and engage them, at the right time with the right content on the right channel – that’s much harder to do than just pushing out the message through lots of channels!

Take 1 day out of your week to sharpen your cross-channel marketing skills…

Is your organization successfully using social media to successfully reach and retain customers, donors, or members?

The Social Summit Planning Committee is seeking presentations that have strong case studies citing statistics which show an effective use of social media as a key component of a campaign. Topics of interests include:

Mobile, SMS, QR Codes
Marketing: Fundraising for Nonprofits or Commercial Campaigns
Website Optimization
Integration
Branding Under One Voice, Marketing Best Practices
Lead Management, Dashboard Lead Measurement
Social Measurement and ROI, Social Dashboards

As blogging has made its way from the basement to the board room, many organizations are tapping in. But many more are tapping out. This session will focus on how organizations of all sizes canplan, build, execute and generate ROI from a company blog.

As an attendee, you will learn from real-world blogging success stories, a formula for creating your own blog, a framework for measuring success on a blog and an argument (or two) to any internal naysayers (who still think blogging has no place in the digital strategy).

May 17State of the Non-Profit Industry: 2011 National Fundraising Performance Report

This lunch sells out each year! This Target Analytics report summarizes direct marketing giving for many of the largest non-profit organizations in the country. Carol will present a forensic comparison of fundraising revenue across sectors: Animal Welfare, Arts & Culture, Environment, Health, Human Services, International Relief, Religion and Societal Benefits. See how your 2011 fundraising results compare to others in your sector and what it might mean for your 2012 campaigns.

One exclusive sponsorship opportunity is available for each monthly Lunch & Learn! For information contact DJ Miller at DJMiller@dmaw.org, call 703-689-DMAW or click here!

All DMAW Lunch & Learn sessions are held the third Thursday of every month at the SEIU Conference Center, 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.
Lunches have a limited seating capacity of 60 people.

As a new member to the DMAW, I found the keynote address at the annual to be very relevant and eye-opening. Mark Rasch – Director of Cybersecurity and Privacy Consulting with CSC – gave an awesome presentation!

Obviously privacy is always a concern. When you couple that with today’s advanced communications and technology available at our fingertips with smart phones, it becomes even more important to respect privacy.

In conversation at the networking reception, someone mentioned a statistic that there are over 300 million active mobile subscribers in the USA alone. Mobile phones are a very personal device. Technology with location based services, facial recognition, near field communication and a new technology called FootPath used in malls to track a shopper’s activity allows retailers to ping your cell phone with coupons as well as gather data about you.

My biggest take-away from this presentation was the opportunity the mobile channel offers direct marketers, non-profits and retailers to reach their target. The challenge is respecting privacy while at the same time making sure your message is relevant.

When I first opened my invitation to DMAW‘s 2012 annual meeting and noticed the title of the keynote presentation, “Your Privacy. . . Does It Really Exist?”, a word favored by my teenage son flashed through my mind: b o r i n g. Still, it had been some time since I had attended a DMAW meeting, so I steeled myself and dutifully registered, figuring I’d spend the time surreptitiously checking email and texting on my mobile while struggling to suppress yawns. I imagined a dry, factual session delivered by a pleasant, frumpy, spectacled, knowledgeable but humorless professor in dull monotone.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mark Rasch – director of CyberSecurity and Privacy Consulting for CSC – knocked it out of the park with an electrifying presentation that was hugely entertaining and informative. Like most people in the audience, I had never seen nor heard of Mark before, but by the time he finished his performance, the picture in my mind had changed to my son’s second favorite expression: O M G!

Departing from conventional wisdom, Rasch opened his power-packed session with a joke that immediately put everyone at ease, but before our smiles faded he launched into a series of increasingly stunning facts interlaced with wonderfully self-deprecating humor and personal anecdotes. Some of his facts were astounding:

The average person in Washington DC is captured on camera 26 times or more each day.

There are electronic tracking devices that emulate cell phone towers, and software that monitors consumer shopping behavior at the mall via their cell phone signal.

Technology exists that uses facial recognition combined with cloud-based searches to identify consumers within seconds, returning personal details such as name & address, phone number, birthdate, and – a whopping 13% of the time – the full social security number!

As he continued, our mild apprehension over the amount and type of personal information available to government officials, marketers, and hackers deepened into serious concern, and by the time he finished there were audible gasps of amazement.

Mark’s presentation is not only mandatory for direct marketers to attend; it truly applies to everybody everywhere. Just as the 1975 movie Jaws gave us nightmares about swimming in the ocean, Your Privacy. . . Does It Really Exist? is guaranteed to leave you shocked and afraid to touch your computer.

Jeff Fowler is president and founder of Decision Software, provider of marketing services and their powerful MarketWide™ campaign management software. DSI is based in Landover, MD. He can be reached at jfowler@dsoftware.biz.

These days everyone is an online marketer, and Dina Wasmer of Incite Creative reminded us all of the importance of managing our online brand at The DMAW’s February luncheon. So much valuable information was shared that it’s impossible to get it all into a single blog post, but here are a few ideas to help you make your brand work online.

Do you have a brand positioning statement and framework? If you don’t, STOP, do not pass go! Without one consistent messaging is difficult. Putting a positioning statement together will improve your online and offline branding efforts. Make sure you include all internal stakeholders in developing your positioning statement and framework (owner, marketing, sales, customer service), and then confirm it with customers, referral sources and partners. In order to establish your framework you will need to identify your target audience(s), identify your field of play (the categories in which you compete), develop your value proposition and points of distinction, and provide proof points. By the way, being “full service” and having “great customer service” are not points of distinction. Who has great customer service? Everybody! How do you provide proof points? Here are several ideas: case studies, awards and testimonials.

Do a brand audit. Take a look at all of your online and offline materials, presentations for speaking engagements, etc. Is your messaging uniform, credible and authentic? What about presentation – are colors, typography and other brand elements consistent? Go ahead and look at what your competitors are doing, but don’t try to make their messaging yours – refer back to your positioning statement so that your messaging is uniquely “you.” Be sure someone in your organization is the “brand police,” checking to ensure that communication is on target in all media, especially social media where it’s easy for individuals to stray.

Researching long-tail keywords that will drive traffic to your website is important. Long-tail keywords will be less expensive for paid advertising (SEM), and will help drive the specific traffic you want, not general untargeted leads. Once you’ve identified your keywords, make sure you use them in all of your online marketing efforts, SEM, SEO, online press releases, and online articles. Don’t forget to include keywords when naming images – make them descriptive and keyword rich. When setting up links for each online marketing effort, link to the most specific landing page that is relevant to the ad or article, not your website home page.

Some additional ways to drive people to your website are contests, or asking viewers to “tell their story.” Customized Facebook fan pages can act as mini billboards encouraging visitors to take a desired action.

Done well, social media can be a boon to your online marketing – keep a 30 day editorial calendar to get the right message out on all of your social media platforms. Don’t forget little things, like adding your signature with a link to your website when you post on social media forums.

And lastly, don’t forget to measure the effectiveness of your online efforts. In order to effectively evaluate your marketing efforts you need benchmarks. What are you starting with, and what are your goals? For instance, if you embark on campaign of monthly press releases to drive traffic to your website, use Google Analytics or another tool to measure the traffic as each release is distributed.

To sum up – have a positioning framework, audit your brand, focus on keywords and messaging in all online marketing and measure your results!

“Build it and they will come.” Well, maybe but will they keep coming? And who will come? Customers? … Probably. Competitors? …Definitely.

I happened to come up with the right product at the right time about 20 years ago and come they did. I created software in 1990 to help students write papers in APA Style. I created this for myself while in school and other students asked to use it. Someone suggested I sell it so I hung a few flyers around school. The rest is history, as they say, but now, 22 years later I have a lot of competition and marketing our product is just not that simple anymore.

Our previous marketing company just was not cutting it. They basically expanded on my flyer idea with better artwork and copy and, while that worked at first, it just could not stand up to the competition.

We’ve been working with Incite Creative for several years now. At first we only wanted some targeted projects but recently we decided to expand our marketing efforts. Dina Wasmer and her staff came up with not just ideas, but an overall strategy tied together by a common theme and design elements. She has us involved in projects that I at first thought had nothing to do with what we sell but now realize it is all about getting attention. She developed a presence for us on Facebook and Twitter, has us blogging, hooked us up with SEO consultants and rebuilt our web site from the ground up incorporating all of these elements and strategies.

I’ve seen Dina’s web site and newsletters and know that she practices what she preaches. So listen to her, she knows what she is talking about.

If you are on the fence about attending the February DMAW lunch to hear about How to Successfully Position and Design your Organization’s Online Brand, I encourage you to REGISTER NOW. You won’t be disappointed.